by Tracey Ward
“I need you to be calm, SB,” he tells me evenly, his serious, gentle voice belonging to a stranger. “Crying and panicking won’t solve anything, you got me?”
“I get you,” I whisper shakily.
The gunshots from the island have stopped. The screaming has not.
“He’s going to live through this.” He opens Nick’s eyes one at a time, alternately shadowing them and letting the sun shine down in them. “We’re in the Golden Hour. Has he ever told you what the Golden Hour is?”
“No,” I sniff.
“It’s the first hour from injury to treatment.” He lifts Nick’s hand to feel his pulse on his wrist. “It’s the ideal window for getting an injured to the hospital, especially an Alpha. The deeper into the Golden Hour you are, the more likely they are to make it.” He leans his ear down to Nick’s chest, listening. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m starting the clock.” He pulls out the cell phone he and Brody share. It can’t possibly have service here in this part of the world, but when he spins it around to face me he’s showing me a timer. It’s winding down from one hour. “This is our window. Clock is ticking as of now. Whatever we do on this island, it needs to happen in less than an hour and you need to have enough juice to Slip him to a hospital afterward. Can you do that?”
I nod firmly. I realize then that as I watched him work my tears dried up. I’m no longer hunching over Nick, grasping desperately at his hand. I’m holding onto him but my shoulders are squared and my heart has calmed.
PJ mode, it turns out, is contagious. Either that or Campbell is good with people—and that I absolutely refuse to believe.
“If he’s unconscious, how is the boat still afloat?” Beck asks from behind me.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Campbell, is he in shock? Why is he out cold?”
“He’s knocked out, but from what I don’t know. His vitals and his responses look like someone under anesthesia.”
“Or in a coma?” Liam asks.
I shoot him an angry glare. “Don’t say that.”
“He’s right,” Campbell says matter-of-factly. “If you took the bullet in his stomach out of the equation, I’d say that’s exactly what’s happening.”
“But if he was in a coma, the connection he has to the boat would be lost. We would have gone into the ocean by now.”
“Unless the connection isn’t lost,” Liam tells me. “When he was shot he very well may have run in the opposite direction.”
Beck shakes his head, confused. “Meaning?”
“Meaning instead of severing his tie to the stone and coming fully into his own body, he went the other way. He went further into the stone,” I say, dread building in my belly.
“Can he come out of that?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, my eyes glued to Nick’s face. I want to hit him. I want to punch him in the eye just like before and tell him he’s gone too far again.
“No time to worry about it now,” Campbell says briskly. He takes my arm and pulls me to my feet. “Now we have to finish what we started. Brody, you’re on guard. Stay in that nest. Shoot anything that comes near this boat.”
“You got it,” he calls down.
“Liam, you’re with Carver. Don’t let him die, and if we’re not back within the hour, Slip him out of here. Get him to a hospital.”
Liam nods, kneeling down beside Nick.
“Beck, you’re with the me and the princess. You up for that?”
“Yeah, or course,” he says, sounding unsure. “But how are we getting to the island? I can’t swim.”
“Of course you can’t. Alex will Slip us there.” He looks at me hard. “Right, SB?”
Exhausted as I feel from pulling the nightmare from Naomi’s mind, I refuse to flinch at his challenge. “Yeah,” I spit out. “I’ll get us there.”
“Good. Do it, then.”
I turn to Beck, smiling as much as I can. “I need to hold your hand to do it, so I need you to be really careful, okay?”
“I won’t hurt you,” he swears solemnly.
“Thank you.”
“Tick, tock, SB. Let’s go,” Campbell insists.
I don’t waste any more time. The Golden Hour is leaking away from us. I have to hurry.
I take hold of both of their hands, reach out as gently as I can, and I dial the hum in my blood up to ten.
I don’t take even a second to enjoy it. I blow past the bubbles and the euphoria and the excitement to land all three of us in a crumpled heap on a beautiful cherry-colored hardwood floor. A floor both boys immediately begin to vomit on.
The room is insanely cold. Outside was hot and tropical and amazing, but inside this boxy, modern building, it’s nothing but cold. Not even just the temperature—the décor too. It looks like no one really lives here. It’s a model home, one staged to be photographed but never used. No one is meant to sit on those perfect white chairs or step on the high-piled gray rug.
Or use that steaming coffee mug with the bright red lipstick on the rim.
“Campbell,” I whisper.
“I see it,” he replies curtly, his gun already in hand. “Follow me. David Banner, you’re behind her.”
We walk in single file through the insanely large living room. There are windows on three of the four sides, all of them with perfect ocean views. In fact, I can see a stark white ship resting patiently in the harbor, the skull of a slain mythical beast staring up at me.
“That’s creepy,” Beck whispers, following my eyes.
“You should have seen the real thing.”
“For a guy that doesn’t feel fear, he has a pretty good grasp on what’s frightening.”
“Shh,” Campbell warns us. “Someone’s coming.”
He’s right: there are hurried footsteps in the hallway, echoing with the distinct click of a high-heeled shoe. But they aren’t getting any louder.
“They aren’t running toward us,” I tell Campbell.
“They’re running away. Come on!” he shouts, breaking out in a sprint.
We sprint after them down the hallway, through an ornate sitting room, past a massive stainless steel kitchen, down a flight of stairs, and straight into a wall.
“What the hell?” I gasp. “We were getting closer, weren’t we?”
“We were gaining on them, yeah,” Campbell says. He scans the hallway we’re in, but there’s nowhere to go. This is the end of the line. “Where could they have gone?”
“Did they go into one of the rooms we passed?”
“Maybe.”
Nope. I know that tone. Nick uses that tone. It sounds like ‘maybe,’ but what it means is ‘you’re wrong.’
“We should go back and check.”
“It’s a waste of time. They’re not back there.”
I throw my hands up in frustration. “Well, we can’t stand here all day and hope they’ll materialize. Nick’s time is ticking down.”
“I know that.”
“Then what do we do?”
Campbell’s face goes from annoyed to deadly calm in a fraction of a second. “Get down!” he barks.
I don’t hesitate. I don’t ask questions. I drop to the floor and cover my head, hoping to every holy and high that I don’t get shot.
There’s a crash behind me. It sounds like the hallway is splitting in half, and the floor vibrates underneath me. Hardwood planks splinter and come up at sharp angles, one of them sticking me painfully in the side. It’s followed by two quick bursts, loud and piercing. Then nothing.
“You can get up,” Campbell tells us calmly.
I twist to look down the hall behind me. Beck is there lying on the ground, his eyes wide. Behind him are two men dressed in the same uniforms we’ve seen on every other guard since the clinic in the Behring Sea. They’re both completely still. Both leaking red onto the demolished floor.
“You okay, big man?” Campbell asks Beck.
Beck grimaces as he lifts himself up. His
hand and halfway up his arm are bleeding badly. He’s covered in scratches all down his front.
“What happened?” I ask him, frantically searching for something to wrap his arm in. One of the few rooms off this hall is a bathroom, where I spot bright white towels. I happily grab one and stain it forever red with Beck’s blood. “Is it bad?”
“No,” he replies. “I cut it on the floor.”
I look down to find more hardwood planks broken and fractured. There’s a hole in part of it—a hole about the size of his fist and forearm.
“You did that? You punched through the floor?”
“I panicked.”
I follow the line of demolishing up the hallway, under where I had lain down, under Campbell’s feet, and straight into the wall. The wall that’s now a little bit crooked.
“Campbell,” I say urgently, pointing behind him. “Look.”
He whips around only to freeze when he sees it. “It’s a fake wall.”
“What do you think its hiding?”
“Could be a safe,” Beck suggests.
“Or it could be a panic room.”
“Sorry, but I’m with SB on this one,” Campbell tells Beck heartily. “You think you can tear this down? Show us what’s behind door number one?”
Beck steps past me to check out the wall. He and Campbell agree on a corner that’s the most messed up, probably the weakest link, and he wastes no time taking hold of it. He’s only about five foot eight—with barely enough meat on his bones to pass for soccer player, let alone a football player, but when he gives the wall a yank, it comes away easily.
I jump back to avoid being crushed by the huge chunk of house he just ripped away like it was gingerbread.
There, on the other side, is a steel door. It looks like a bank vault.
“How are we going to get that open?” I ask.
Campbell looks at Beck. “What do you think?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not sure, but I can try.”
“That’s all we ask, man. SB, get back. Farther down the hall. Or better yet, get inside one of those rooms.”
I search the hallway, only finding the bathroom I already spotted and a narrow door that’s probably a linen closet. “There are no rooms down here,” I tell him, opening the doors. “Just the bathroom and this clos—oh man.”
“I don’t really care where you hide,” he says dismissively. “You got this, Beck. Pull!”
“Guys!” I shout, lifting my hands into the air and backing away from the closet.
Inside is a small, elderly woman in a nightgown. Her eyes are a blue so bright they’re almost white, her skin hanging loose from her face and neck. Her lips painted a brilliant red.
“You’re Sandrine Ardant,” I whisper, shocked. I don’t know what I expected, but Old Mother Hubbard living in a cupboard was not on my list.
“Who are you?” she demands, her accent thick and difficult to understand.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Who sent you? Andre? Gustav? Who?” she demands, lunging the gun at me with each guess.
“I don’t know who any of those people are,” I insist, my tone high-pitched and strained.
“I have deliver what they ask for. They have no right. No right!”
“No right to what?”
She catches sight of the mangled floor, Beck’s bleeding arm, and her wall tossed off the hinges. “They send my own product to kill me?” she asks, disbelieving. “Them bastards. I send new shipment tomorrow. I send them with your heads in basket!”
She lunges at me again, her lips pinched tightly in rage, and I wait for the pain.
The gunshot comes, but the pain never does.
She stumbles to the side, her withered body bouncing off the wall and collapsing to the floor. I stare at it, shocked.
It’s over. Just like that. It happened so fast I can’t even believe it. I stand there amazed, staring at the still body of this tiny, elderly woman who I’d never seen before today, but she had such a huge hand in my life. She altered everything. Not just Nick’s body or my brain, but everything. Our lives, our families. Our destinies. It all began with her, and now here it ends.
“I can’t believe this was all orchestrated by a little old lady,” I say. “And now it’s over.”
“Alex, step away from her,” Campbell tells me urgently.
“What?”
“Step away from her.”
“Why?”
“Because, idiot, there’s no blood.”
I look back down at the body. He’s right.
“Holy crap,” I gasp, backing up.
Slowly she begins to roll over. The worst part about it, the creepiest little bit of the whole freaky thing, is that she’s laughing—a wheezy, dry, old, brittle cackle like a witch in a fairy tale. It makes me want to kick her in her teeth and run for the hills, but I doubt they’re real. I’d get a foot full of denture and a goblin on my leg.
“Fifty-three years I been inside organization,” she grunts, standing up slowly. There’s a small hole in the front of her nightgown. Right in the center of her chest. She pushes her fingers into it, tugging and tearing until the thin cloth rips away, revealing a dark blue vest. I imagine it’s bulletproof. “I eat, drink, sleep, shower with it. I learn long time ago you trust no one. Not even cat.”
Campbell levels his gun at her face. “Nothing a headshot won’t cure.”
She jumps into the air, startling us all. When she comes down, she shocks us.
She hits the floor with such force it sends a ripple through the building. It’s like an earthquake and she’s the epicenter. I’m knocked down first, Campbell is thrown against a wall, and Beck goes down on his back, smacking his head on the steel door of the panic room.
When it’s over, Sandrine has her gun pointed at Campbell. “Go ahead,” she taunts. “Draw your pistol. See if strength is only power I pick up over years.”
“Don’t do it,” I tell him. “I have a feeling she’s fast.”
“You think?” he asks sarcastically, his eyes fixed on her gun.
“What do we do?” I ask wearily.
I can’t Slip behind her and do the trick I did in Florida: she has heightened reflexes, and the second I disappear, she’ll shoot Campbell. And he’s not wearing a vest. Beck isn’t moving, so I assume he’s knocked out for the time being. Campbell’s hand holding his gun is hanging down by his side. If he were Nick, I’d say go for it. Give it a shot. Campbell doesn’t have souped-up reflexes, though. I don’t see it ending well for any of us, especially Campbell.
We’re in a standoff, one I don’t see a great way of getting out of. I’m waiting for Campbell to come up with some brilliant, smart-guy solution when an alarm goes off.
It’s the timer. The Golden Hour is over.
Nick’s chances of surviving just dropped dramatically.
“We don’t have time for this!” I shout, frustrated out of my damn mind.
I dial the hum beyond ten. I turn the knob until it breaks. I push past every barrier I have—and a few I didn’t know where there—and I stage dive into the unknown.
When I went into Naomi’s mind to find a monster, it was easy. She had all the doors thrown open just waiting for me to come in. This lady, Sandrine, not so much. She doesn’t want me there. She slams doors in my face, she puts up a fight, she screams at me in the real world and in her mind.
None of it matters. She may have super-strength in her body, but her mind doesn’t have anything on me. I go where I want, and when I find those closed doors, I kick them open like the cops coming into a meth lab.
The world bursts to blinding white. I squint against it, but just as soon as it happened, it ends.
I’m in a small, one-room shack with a dirt floor and worn mattresses laid out on the ground. Flies buzz around the room loudly, too loud to be real. A hot wind is blowing in from a ratty curtain hung over the doorway, and there she stands. Sandrine. She’s young, no older than I am now, and I can’t believe it base
d on the dried-up ghoul I just met, but she’s beautiful. Her hair is long and dark. Her skin is a perfect, creamy white. Her lips are painted the same shade of vibrant red.
She looks around frantically, her hands quivering at her sides.
“What… what trick is this? How do you do this?” she demands, her voice shaking with anger.
“I’m not doing it. You are. This is your house,” I explain. “I just forced my way in.”
“Is where I was born. I swear I never come back here. I burn it to ground before I set foot again!”
“Technically you’re not here, so calm down.”
She glares at me with rage burning in her dark eyes. “You know what happen here? So many years ago, I barely remember.”
“I don’t know. Probably something terrible.”
She smiles. “I kill my father here. I take his business to join organization.” She points excitedly down at the dirt floor. “I start my life here when I end his.”
“Fifty-three years ago?”
“Ah, you listen. Good. Listen now: I kill you. I kill you in here,” she taps her temple, “and I kill you out there. You have nowhere to run.”
“Neither do you,” I tell her quietly. “In fact, you’ll never leave this room again.”
“You know how to fight, little girl? Because Sandrine knows.”
“I believe you. That’s why I’m going to go and you’re going to stay, and I’ll never have to see how this would pan out.”
“I leave through door. I come for you!”
I shake my head calmly. “That door doesn’t work.”
She eyes me suspiciously before going to the door. “How can door no work?” she murmurs.
Sandrine shoves the curtain aside, pouring sunlight into the room. Cautiously she steps over the threshold. She disappears out the door. Then she steps right back in again.
She blinks when she sees she’s back in the same room. “I… I go out the door, but…”
“But it led you right back here?” I fill in for her. “Yeah, I know. I made it that way.”
“How? Why?”
“Because,” I tell her softly, “you made me this way.”
I turn off the hum. I reenter the waking world.
I lock the door behind me.